Alexander Chen, Bach and the New York Subway

I think it must have been during Thursday morning that someone tweeted a link to an Alexander Chen Google Glass video experiment. I'm afraid I can't remember who it was. The video was pretty cool but I got completely distracted by these two other pieces Chen created. Chen is a Creative Director at Google Creative Lab in New York. You can read a full bio here on his site.

Baroque.me (2011) by Alexander Chen.

Baroque.me visualizes the first Prelude from Bach's Cello Suites. Using the math behind string length and pitch, it came from a simple idea: what if all the notes were drawn as strings? Instead of a stream of classical notation on a page, this interactive project highlights the music's underlying structure and subtle shifts.

Conductor (2011) by Alexander Chen.

Conductor turns the New York subway system into an interactive string instrument. Using the MTA's actual subway schedule, the piece begins in realtime by spawning trains which departed in the last minute, then continues accelerating through a 24 hour loop. The visuals are based on Massimo Vignelli's 1972 diagram.